Position in chronology
Ontario 2, missing 3
Not yet translated
This tablet is catalogued with its transliteration and photographed, but no published translation exists yet. Our translation engine works through the untranslated corpus every night, oldest first — this page will update the day its turn comes. If you are a specialist and can read it, we would love your help.
The world it comes from
A bureaucratic golden age, the Code of Ur-Nammu.
From the same catalogue range (near P209802)
Transliteration
a2-ma-ru ki-sal4-mu geme2-an-da#-ba-ra-sze6 igi ga-ti-la-sze3 igi iszkur-ra-be-sze3 iti udru mu e2 szara2 ba-du-ta iti udru mu i-bi2-suen-sze3 da-da dumu ur-dun
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Ontario 2, missing 3. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (P209802) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P209802..
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.